HTML and Web Pages
AJ Alegre and Amy Kelly
Introduction
HTML stands for Hyper Text
Mark-up Language, and is used to design and format documents on the internet.
HTML can be a simple and easy to use mark-up language to learn, once you know
the basics. HTML is also very powerful and can be used for everything from a
simple family news website to a full-powered business portal.
The HTML standard is proposed
and maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which publishes updates
and revisions periodically. Many people have had a part in the growth and
development of HTML over the fifteen years of its life. This concept for a
standard way to link documents was developed by Tim Berners-Lee, who was
employed at Centre European pour la Recherche Nucleaire (CERN) during the
1980’s and early 1990’s. The first versions of HTML were based on Standard
Generalized Mark-up Language (SGML), and used some of the same concepts for
tags, such as the <TITLE> (for the title of the document) and <P>
(to make a new paragraph) tags.
HTML is so powerful in part
because of the development of Graphic User Interface (GUI) operating systems
and browsers. GUI systems and mice allow the user to point and click on a
document and links, which radically changed the way that the internet was used.
Before, a user needed to know the exact file path of the document they were
looking for, but with a point and click interface that became less important.
HTML Today
Today, HTML is evolving into
XHTML and XML, which can be cross-platform compatible for PDAs and cell phones,
as well as for the traditional browser. XML and XHTML allow greater flexibility
in designing custom code for the internet. An example of this is used at
LiveJournal.com, an online journaling site based in Beaverton, OR. Typing
<lj user=”user”> into a journal entry on livejournal.com gives ![[info]](./HTML_files/image001.gif){kind=small}
user as
output.
There are many different HTML
editors and What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG)-type utilities available for
editing HTML. HTML in its most pure form is simple, clean, and easy to read and
understand. Editors and WYSIWYG utilities are powerful tools, but to use HTML
at its full potential, you should learn the basic tags and what they mean.
HTML Tags
Below are some basic HTML tags
and their uses.
Document tags -
- <HTML></HTML> -- Defines the
document as an HTML file and tells the browser how to handle the tags.
- <HEAD></HEAD> -- Document
information, such as the HTML standard used, any keywords, and the
<TITLE> tags go here.
- <TITLE></TITLE> -- The title of
the document that is displayed in the status bar at the top of the browser
window is entered here.
- <BODY></BODY> -- The main body of
the webpage that will be displayed in the browser window goes between
these tags.
Formatting tags –
- <A
HREF=”http://www.url.here/”>link</A> -- Inserts a hyperlink to a
document.
- <A
HREF=mailto:someone@theirdomain.com>e-mail</A> -- Inserts a
hyperlink to an e-mail address into the document.
- <P> -- Starts a new paragraph with a
hard carriage return.
- <BR> -- Makes a line break.
- <HR> -- Inserts a horizontal row into
the document.
- <CENTER></CENTER> -- Centers the
image or text it surrounds.
- <B></B> -- Bolds the text it
surrounds.
- <I></I> -- Italicizes the text it
surrounds.
- <IMG SRC=”image.file”> -- Inserts an
image file into the document.
Basics of good Web design
Good web design boils down to
writing your page for the lowest common factor. Write for the oldest common
browser, the slower dial-up speeds, and older computers. Remember that your
document can be seen by anyone in the world! It is not as common now, but in
many Asian and some European counties, users are still charged by the kilobyte
for their internet use. Be courteous when you plan your pages.
A well designed web page loads
quickly and cleanly. To start, keep your document and image sizes as small as
possible. Just because you may have a cable connection that can download that
lovely picture that’s over a megabyte in size quickly and easily doesn’t mean
that someone else who may be trying to load your page from a dial-up connection
can. Keep it as small as you can, or if you absolutely MUST use it, provide a
fast-loading text page for other users.
Test your page in as many
browsers and on as many platforms as you can. You’ll have a better idea of what
works and what doesn’t if you do. Also, always close your tags! Older browsers
will choke and freeze when they come across non-standard code. Also, some older
browsers would not render a page at all if the </BODY> and </HTML>
tags were not in place, since they would look for them to know when the page
was complete. The beauty of the web is the very nature of its free exchange of
information – and if you use tags or code that is platform-specific, you hinder
that.
Web hosting services
There are many companies on the
internet that offer free or low-cost web hosting for personal users. A free
server such as <http://www.geocities.com/> or
<http://www.tripod.com/> can be a good first server to use. They offer a
small amount of webpage, and some basic HTML help to get you started. They will
put banner ads onto your page in exchange for providing your web space.
Many local and national
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide around 10M or more webspace for
subscribers. This can be a convenient option, also.
Paid web space, like
<http://www.icestorm.com/> or <http://www.dreamhost.com/> can
provide more functionality with TelNET, SSH, and FTP logins, CGI-BIN and PHP
support, and multiple logins for a business or personal power users.
References
For full documentation of HTML
4.01, please see <http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/>.
World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C), <http://www.w3.org/>, 12/05/04
Marc Abrams, ed., World Wide
Web - Beyond the Basics, Prentice Hall, 1998.
Online at <http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~wwwbtb/book/index.html>,
12/05/04
Raggett, Dave “Raggett on HTML 4”, Addison Wesley
Longman, 1998. Online at <http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/book4/ch02.html>,
12/05/04
W3C, “Some early ideas for HTML” Online at <http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/historical>,
12/05/04